Planning for success

I have been so excited to write this blog all about how I have been planning out my goals and priorities for 2025.

I love planning. I love planning out plots for my novels, modules for my courses, holidays, and my time. That's not to say things always go according to plan. For example in my current work in progress my characters have hijacked the plot and decided that they know better. Instead of fighting with them, afterall they are imaginary vices in my head, I decided to relax and listen to my body and my gut. I'm so glad I did because the story is even better that I'd planned for.

Over the years I have tried all sorts of planning systems and although there have been a lot of useful tools and tips, nothing had kept me really on track and helped me to achieve all the things I wanted to achieve. I have tried the Passion Planner which didn't work for me. I have also looked at Erin Condrin and Happy Planners. Postage is usually the deciding factor here. I am going to the USA at least once in 2025 so I may consider picking one up while I'm there.

Here's what I learned this year:

Command Board (aka monthly whiteboards which I move each month). I created this for myself last year as an easy visual year planner. Best thing I ever did. Kids want to know when they have holidays? Check the Command Board.

Plum Paper personalised planner: I have used this thick A5 ring bound planner which I personalised to suit me all year. I love it and would happily have bought it again if not for two things:

1. It has weeks which sometimes double up so it can start a new month on a new page. I like every monday to start on a new page and show me the entire week, even if it starts a new month. It was a pet peeve, but bothered me a lot.

2. The price. At the time it cost me around $300 USD including postage. That is by far the most I have ever spent. Before this I would pick up $20 planners from the newsagent and they had many of the same features. 

Steph Pase business planner:

I have been using my Steph Pase planner since 1 July. The edition I got is an Australian financial year July-June planner. It comes with lots of space for budgeting, planning, reviews and some cute stickers. I forget to use most of it to be honest! It's beautiful but it is A3 so it's a big heavey thing to carry around. Also, I like week to a page and in this one weeks flows over four pages. It was about $90 so I'm going to continue using it, but I'm unlikely to  invest in the same planner next year. I will keep an eye out though and if she does a week to page I may consider it.

Intrinsic planner:

My favourite thing about this planner are all the beautiful colours they come in. Mine is fushia (of course! That's my signature colour). It is A5 which makes it small enough to keep in my handbag but also small enough that I can't use it to plan out my day. There is also a lot of year planning in the front which take up a quarter of the whole planner.

I am finding the text really small and hard for me to read, which is unfortunate because I love the Intrinsic products and I really wanted to love this planner. 

Sarra Cannon's HB90:

I discovered Sarra recently when the Romance Writers Of Australia announced that she is coming out to the 2025 conference in Hobart as a key speaker. (Registration is still open if you want the oppourtunity to meet her in person).

The HB90 Method is a quarterly planner and system that helps writers plan their weeks, follow through on plans, stay flexible, reflect on what worked, and adjust priorities. It includes a planner and a 7-day course that explains the system. I'm not a fan of the actual weekly or daily planner section, but that's my personal preference. I like week to a page with lines and horizontal days over vertical.

I had a serious aha moment when she went deep into time management here. Actually writing down how many hours a project was going to take and seeing that I literally don't have enough time in a day to complete all the projects I wanted to was a huge shift for me. I wasn't actually procrastinating or lazy. I had other things taking up my time -creating content for Tiktok for one, that just wasn't worth my effort.

When I got clear on my big vision and how I wanted my life to be, it became obvious how to spend my time to achieve that.

I did customise a few things to work better for me, my brain and lifestyle and that is 100% supported by Sarra and the HB90 Alumni of over 3000 people. It's a community I enjoyed being in and I am so glad I invested in this program. Now I have my big 3 outcome goals, and those are my big focus for quarter 1.

High Performance Planner by Brendon Burchard:

I am obsessed with Brendon Burchard's podcast and his audio book The 6 Habits of Growth and recently when I was at a bookstore I found his paper planner for sale. Since it was heavily discounted I decided to give it a whirl. 

There is some good information in there and great journal prompts. I don't use it to it's full extent and often forget about it all together, but I do think it is a great tool.

Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt:

I heard Amy Porterfield rave about the Full Focus planner a couple of years ago and have always wanted to try it out. Unfortunatly the USD-AUD exchange rate and the cost off shipping, always stopped me. That is until they had their recent Black Friday special which I decided to take advantage of.

The full focus planner comes in a few different formats but they are all physical paper planners. Because of this, I am still waiting on my planner to be delivered. I'll update you when this arrives.

My planning plans for 2025:

1.Continue using my whiteboard moveable month

2. Use my Intrinsic planner as my handbag planner and to keep my appointments in.

3. Finish off the financial year with my Steph Pase planner 

4. Use Brendon Burchard's daily journal prompts for my morning and evening journalling habit.

5. Try out the Full Focus planner - I do have high hopes for this but it was still expensinve and each book only lasts a quarter.

Here's to a productive year!